Echoes
by Salchat
Summary: Sheppard and his team discover a vast cavern where their voices echo with perfect clarity. How will they react?


A/N: I wrote this little story while stuck in hospital with 'neutropenic sepsis', feeling fine but with too much time on my hands. Anyway, I'm planning on visiting Naples in the Autumn with my family and there's an area of ancient Roman ruins with a half-submerged domed building which has an eerily beautiful acoustic. So, I was thinking, what could I sing there with my daughters? And that led me to think, what would John and his team do in that situation? And what if it was a really good echo? So, here is a mix of silliness and beauty, a good combination for a happy life, in my opinion!

**Echoes**

The Stargate was underground. It sat in a cave barely higher than the top of the ring itself. John wondered how the Ancients had got it in there. The silver blue light from the event horizon reflected in rippling bands from the uneven surface of the cave, bouncing off stalagmites and stalactites, highlighting the sharpness of the truncated formations that had been vapourised in the cascading swoosh of the opening gate.

The team were here to take samples, to look around, to find the reason for this Gate's presence deep in a complex of caves beneath the surface of a planet, which was, according to the Ancient's database, non-descript.

"Check in in two hours," said John into his radio, looking at his watch. "Sheppard out."

The gate shut down and the team turned on their flashlights which penetrated the darkness with broad yellow-white beams. There were several small off-shoots leading out of the cave, but one had obviously been deliberately widened and made smooth underfoot. It had also been given a camber and the ceiling was curved and ridged like the ceiling of a Roman steam room so that, in the intervening ten thousand years since the Ancients had left the Pegasus galaxy, water had dripped only to either side of the path, creating an avenue of limestone columns.

"Those Ancients really thought long-term with their architecture!" said Rodney, feeling the smooth, damp surface of one of the columns and shining his flashlight over the corrugated ceiling.

"They are very beautiful!" said Teyla following the passage while sweeping her flashlight slowly to either side and over her head.

Ronon gave the columns a cursory glance and stomped off down the passageway, leaving John hustling Teyla and Rodney after him. _Who's the team leader here? _thought John, not for the first time.

The passage curved and widened slightly and John, his place on point resumed, became aware of a whispering sound from up ahead. He gestured to his team to stop and they stood, listening. Silence. John crept forward slowly, waving to his team to follow, his senses fully alert. The whispering began again and as they trod warily down the passage, it seemed to increase and alter in nature into a pattering, tapping sound.

"What is that?" said Rodney, in a loud stage whisper and before John could berate him for giving them away a ghostly, but distinct "What is that?" floated back to them out of the darkness.

John stood up straight, relaxed, and looked around, sheepishly.

"An echo!" he said, and his words were repeated, several times, dwindling hollowly into the distance.

Giving up their stealthy approach, they carried on, setting up a great clatter of booted feet which reverberated round them with increasing volume until the passage ended in a vast cavern. Their flashlight beams shone far, far out into the darkness, glinting off the smooth, rounded rocky sides nearest to them but not strong enough to reveal the distant far side.

The sound of the team's approach faded gradually to nothing until they stood in silence, sensing rather than seeing the impossibly huge void before them, feeling the still, cold, dampness of the air.

John heard Rodney take a breath, but waved to stop him. He held his hand out in front of him, palm uppermost, and snapped his fingers just once. The snap came back clearly and then bounced around the huge space, gradually multiplying until the cavern was filled with a fluttering which faded slowly away to nothing.

John looked round at his team with a playful smirk and waved them forward. They strode out into the cavern, their steps echoing and magnifying, filling the space with a roar of sound. They stopped and the sound faded away. Ronon could no longer contain himself and let out a huge "Whoop!" and Rodney, not to be outdone, clapped, so that the cavern echoed with Ronon's voice and Rodney's responding applause. And then it echoed with John's firm, "Stop!" He faced his team as the echo of his voice continued, both hands held up, P90 hanging from its sling. They waited until just silence remained. Nobody moved. John pointed at Rodney, like a conductor cueing his soloist, mouthing "You go first!"

Rodney looked thoughtful for a moment, then his blue eyes lit up. He took a deep breath. "Three point one four one five nine two six five three five eight nine seven nine three two three eight four six..."

John couldn't hear to how many decimal places Rodney recited pi; his voice multiplied and overlapped until they felt surrounded by numbers. He continued until his breath ran out and then stopped, staring about him, hands held up, a broad grin on his face, listening to the mathematical beauty until the numbers gradually faded away into a solo, "seven eight one six four..."

Rodney sighed. "That's the most appropriate expression of pi I've ever heard!" he said wistfully. "It really felt like it could go on forever!"

Ronon shrugged and grunted. John secretly agreed with Rodney. Teyla smiled, not really understanding Rodney's happiness, but pleased that he was pleased.

"You go next, Sheppard," said Ronon.

"Okay, then," said John with a badly suppressed grin. "I give you: the evil laugh!" John proceeded to deliver a comic book "Mwa, ha, ha!" that bounced off the rocky walls percussively, with maniacal abandon until it seemed there was a villain in every fissure and crevice, malevolence emitting from the air itself. Ronon and Rodney grinned along with John as the evil nemeses laughed themselves gradually to nothing. Teyla looked mildly amused.

John turned to Ronon, with a 'beat that!' expression on his face.

Ronon, in his turn, took a deep breath. John thought: _It'll be some kind of Satedan battle cry. _Rodney thought: _There's more to Ronon than meets the eye; it'll be a quote from some epic about brave heroes._

Ronon's eyes gleamed with mischief. He gave a strange, convulsing swallow. Then he let out the most deeply resonant burp any of his team had ever heard in their lives. John and Rodney immediately dissolved into schoolboy laughter so that Ronon's gigantic burp bounced around the cavern to an accompaniment of his friends' hilarity. Ronon merely stood, looking immensely pleased with himself. The whole process ended up taking quite some considerable time as, when either John or Rodney would gain control over themselves and stop, wiping their eyes, the other would continue, inevitably ending in both of them laughing hysterically once more. It took a sustained, cool glare from Teyla to bring them, breathlessly back under control and then they still had to listen to their own laughter reverberating round the rocky walls until it disappeared to nothing.

"Sorry, Teyla," they chorused, with mock contrition.

"My turn, I think," said Teyla with quiet dignity.

Teyla strode gracefully further into the cavern and stood, arms relaxed at her sides; and with complete unselfconsciousness, she began to sing. She started low, with a long, sustained tone that began to build in richness as the echo doubled and tripled its power. Then her voice rose and she timed her changes in pitch so that she harmonised with herself, her melody weaving in and out with sinuous grace, rising and falling, filling the huge space of the cavern with music of exquisite purity.

Teyla began to create piercing dissonances which resolved to harmony with painful sweetness. Her voice leapt to a high register, leaving the echoes contrasting in their low, mellow richness. She repeated phrases several times so that the multitude became briefly a single line, then wove a melody that chased itself, like a round, then fanned out gradually into a broad tapestry of harmony from the lowest mahogany timbre to the highest silvery lightness.

Her voice filled the huge cavern, as a cathedral choir might fill the eminence of that ancient space; until she stopped and stood, eyes closed, listening as her many voices dwindled slowly to a final, high clear tone that lingered on the cold air like the soft chime of a bell.

They stood in silence, four unlikely friends, deep beneath the surface of an alien planet, where none had set foot since the Ancients so many thousands of years ago. Teyla turned, smiled and it was as if a spell had been broken. Rodney shuffled and broke the silence with a large sniff, surreptitiously wiping his eyes, mumbling something about needing an antihistamine.

"That was... um... nice," said John with typical inarticulacy.

"Thank you, John," replied Teyla, who knew he meant more than he said.

"Yeah, cool," agreed Ronon.

The cavern reflected their words, their movements in a murmured rumble of mundanity, the ethereal heights of beauty that Teyla's voice had created gone forever. They turned, made their way to the entrance, the echo clinging to each word, a laugh, the scuff of a boot on the stone floor, the sounds receding along with the light they took away with them, until the cavern was once more empty, once more dark, once more silent.


End file.
